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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their heritage. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same inn, visiting the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the very same school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large car park – is expected to